A Lark Ascending

Thanks, kinuta. Could do with those hints. The only Korean film I recall watching was 'Brotherhood' about the Korean War - that was good. I know Takemitsu from his concert hall pieces but have only heard the odd suite from the films. Last night: Nice little animation set in Cuba and New York in the late 40s. Lots of (animated) cameo appearances from stars of Cuban music and Bebop.

Jazz sounded 'old-fashioned' to me in the early 70s - I associated it with Dudley Moore on TV variety programmes and 'specials' with the likes of OP, Ellington, Basie who just seemed so old. It was the proselytising of people like McLaughlin and Santana and the Soft Machine/Canterbury musicians (with added Tippetts and Blue Notes!) that first turned my head. I started to get more curious when my interest in rock started to dry up around 75/76. I found it tough at first - most jazz tracks tended to start in a mood and stay there. I was used to prog-rock tracks that would have huge textural changes every couple of minutes. But it clicked after a while. Oddly the electric-Miles'n shades did not appeal at all. I bought Bitches Brew in late '76 and hated it - although I could appreciate the musicianship I couldn't cope with the endless playing over one or two chords. It was a chance hearing of 'KInd of Blue' that got me listening to Miles. I didn't go near the electric stuff until the 90s (I am now a convert!). I remember the late-70s, when I first started exploring, as a time when jazz was deeply unfashionable in Britain (the period from the late-60s to early 70s when jazz musicians were regularly turning up on rock records seemed to shrivel - I think I just caught the tag end of that, being made aware of someone as jazz hardcore as Stan Tracey through name dropping in the rock papers...there was even a TV programme about him in early '77 portraying him as some sort of grand old man inspiring the young. He must have been about 40!). I had to order 'A Love Supreme' and it took several weeks to arrive from somewhere in Europe. As far as I can recall it wasn't until the early 80s the jazz entered another fashionable phase.with the whole Courtney Pine/Loose Tubes/Andy Sheppard thing (was that the Acid Jazz period?...I missed that completely!). It wasn't until around then that things like the Miles mid-60s records became readily available outside the London import shops.

Spectacular. High body count! I got curious about this because of Takemitsu's role in providing the music. Had me riveted. I need to watch some more Asian films - remember seeing a few excellent historically based films from China in 80s when I lived in walking distance of an independent cinema.

Weren't those Festive 50s audience choices? The 1976 one looks very 'album rock' mainstream. I recall much greater diversity in Peel's own taste - and he had no time for the likes of Yes or Genesis (even though the latter did early sessions on his programme). I don't remember the Festive 50 when I was a regular listener (1970-3) though I was aware of it in the mid-70s because it got quite a bit of publicity. Perhaps. Though in my experience, in Britain at least, there is a particular outlook that is suspicious of music that shows any form of complexity or flash. It became rock music orthodoxy from around '76. I think Peel was just instinctively drawn to music that didn't try to be too 'clever'. I noticed that outlook in a recent Guardian review of the new Dave Gilmour record that ends: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/sep/20/david-gilmour-rattle-that-lock-album-review-weighed-down-by-opulence I've no horses in the Gilmour stakes...to my ears he peaked decades ago. Just found it interesting that the prejudice against what is termed 'muso virtuosity' is still there in rock music. A world view that sees virtuosity as something to be suspicious of is unlikely to warm to jazz (and I know jazz is about more than virtuosity and all the arguments there about technique and feeling). A lot of it in Britain is about class (everything in Britain is about class!). Though Peel (like Robert Wyatt) was from the comfortable middle classes and like many of the young well-to-do of the 60s revolted into what Joni Mitchell called 'the boho zone' (where did that accent come from?). Whatever the working class origins of jazz, by the 70s it was often viewed, along with classical music, as a middle/upper class affectation.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/gallery/2015/sep/28/photo-highlights-of-the-day

That must have been rare. He often expressed his dislike of jazz (even though he did sessions with the likes of Lol Coxhill and Elton Dean's more 'out' bands). Ian Anderson (the other one) who runs fRoots has a similar wide ranging, missionary zeal...but also seems impatient with jazz despite being extremely catholic musically.

Another article here: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/28/good-night-good-riddance-review-john-peel-david-cavanagh Love this bit: !!!

No. Read it again - it was 10 plays (largely revision) in 20 days and 22 was the score over the whole 2-year Shakespeare course. Oops! And there was me thinking you were the bionic scholar!

Wow - 22 plays in 20 days! I'm thinking of 5 years! At school I did 'Julius Caesar' for 'O' Level - after some months of being irritated by having to dissect it line by line I came to really enjoy it (clearly because I'd been made to dissect it...but you don't know that when you are 15!). Remember enjoying 'Othello' and 'King Lear' in my first Sixth Form school where we did have to do Shakespeare. When I was about 13 we had to read 'Twelfth Night' which did not go down at all well!! In the late 70s the BBC did that complete Shakespeare series which I remember watching a fair few of. Don't suppose you were a fan of the 'Richard III' film set in some sort of dystopian Mosleyite alternative universe? This sort of thing happens in opera too - I was watching a version of Handel's 'Theodora' a couple of weeks back and that was set in some imaginary totalitarian USA - Margaret Atwood meets Handel! I can live with these things but prefer a plainer approach, set either in Shakespeare's own time or the time of the events he is portraying (however anachronistic he might have been). Don't suppose you'll be rushing out to watch the new 'Macbeth' movie? The last one I watched was 'The Tempest' with Helen Mirren which I enjoyed. So much of that play has been mined by musicians down the years.

Finished Keith Richards bio. Very enjoyable. Incredibly narcissistic but then when you've been idolised since your late teens and had every bit of bad behaviour lauded for living the R&R lifestyle that's hardly surprising. Matches Michael Ashcroft for wanting to settle scores with colleagues and former lovers! I thought the best things were the early parts on growing up in the south Thames area; and the sheer love of music that gets communicated throughout. Half way through: Just got to the morning of Waterloo with everyone hunting for breakfast. Superb book. Very, very detailed but draws on a lot of testimony from soldiers and other participants who were there giving a human dimension that can be missing from some tactics obsessed military histories. It flips back and forth between the simultaneous battles at Quatre Bras and Ligny over 16th June which means you have to keep your brain sharp. But it works. Alongside, just started: Which I'm enjoying. I liked studying Shakespeare at school (though I did what I suspect was the only English A Level ever without Shakespeare [we did Marlowe instead]) and have seen performances, films and read the odd play since. But I've never really got my head round it. Hope to correct that - off to see Henry V at Stratford next week.

Glastonbury tor, Glastonbury, England. Looks like a painting to me! Presumably graininess caused by the low light. Some lovely worldwide shots here: http://www.theguardian.com/science/gallery/2015/sep/28/blood-moon-supermoon-rises-pictures-from-around-the-world Like:

Cider with Rosie Soft-centred and sentimental but I rather enjoyed this...especially the views of the English countryside, mythologised by the camera into unreal loveliness. I read the book when I was about 12 and living in Gloucestershire. Found it a bit racy at the time! The teenagers seemed to be played by much older actors - Rosie looked like a 20 something! Can't find anything about the music - sounded like Spiro or Three Cane Whale, contemporary folkies with a slightly minimalist spin on the music. In fact minimalism seems to have become the default soundtrack approach of recent years - all those motor rhythms and repeated melodic patterns. Where did that start? The Piano, The Draughtsman's Contract? Even something olde Englishe like Downton Abbey has one of those. Whatever happened to the plaintive oboes and soaring violas?

Absolutely. He was never a man who needed his enjoyment to be 'Art'.

Bloody lefty journals! Clearly out to destroy the world communication system.

Of course. My tongue was firmly in my cheek with 'the enemy' comment. In the end it's all entertainment. If it brings pleasure it has worked - what brings pleasure changes with each micro-generation (and varies within each of those). To be honest, Peel's inclinations were always for the simpler, rougher, less ornate.

Ah yes, Manchester rain! Kept the cotton moist so it wouldn't snap! My commute was 19 miles, half through open countryside so I was hardly unaware of the seasons. But walking gives a different perspective. Although I always did a lot of walking in the summer holidays and a bit at Easter I generally missed the autumn. Feel like I've got it back.

"Dr Foster" - a pretty standard TV story of marital betrayal and revenge. Not the sort of thing I'd normally watch but I'm rather partial to Suranne Jones. She does seem to play much the same character as in Scott & Bailey - nervy and impulsive with explosive consequences. Never read the book, largely through not being keen on magical realism or fantasy in general (Wagner excepted!). But enjoyed this. You got a real sense that a long, complex book was been whizzed through and I'd imagine admirers of the book would not be taken with it. Great soundtrack.

Don't know if you noticed this, Bill, but I'm much more aware of the incremental changes of the seasons now I'm not at work all day. I was thrown back to being a kid on the lane in that last picture when I saw a horse chestnut ready to drop. At work I'd notice the gorgeous colours of autumn in the morning/evening drive but my brain was so full of other things that it was just an passing impression. Having time just seems to make me more aware of it all.

Lah di dah, lah di dah, 'tis autumn... I travel all over seeking out nice landscapes...but sometimes you need to just look in your own neighbourhood.

Zingst, Germany: A murmuration of starlings wheel around the sky at dusk before roosting near Zingst on the Fischland-Darss peninsula. http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2015/sep/25/photo-highlights-of-the-day

I was a bit young for 'The Perfumed Garden' - and living in Singapore from 1965-8 so missed the whole centre of the Swinging' Sixties (though at 12 on my return I'd hardly have been at its heart!). Peel actually hated a lot of the music I loved - but there was so much else on his programmes to take in. Really liked his Saturday morning Radio 4 programmes in the 90s. Amazing how he shifted from this icon of the counter-culture to a cuddly defender of the family. He had a very gentle way interviewing people who had gone through tough times. His death really hit me. Came right out of the blue.

Maybe it should add..."in Britain for lots of people between 40 and 70"! Guardian article: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/25/how-john-peel-created-our-musical-world I remember listening to those first Roxy Music sessions; and the broadcast of Tubular Bells before release which I duly bought and helped to start the Branson empire! Though I don't remember: Maybe I'd already bought the record and didn't listen. I'll be intrigued by the early part of this to see if it matches my memory - Captain Beefheart next to Thin Lizzy next to Martin Carthy next to Kevin Ayers next to Billy Pig (Northumbrian small pipe player!) next to Elton Dean's 'Just Us'. Clearly my memory has selectively excised a lot. Lost touch once I went to Uni ('73) and when Peel joined 'the enemy' in '76. But owe him huge amounts for opening my ears between 1970-73.

A misty Meon Valley from Beacon Hill Nature Reserve, photographed by Barrie Webb. A beautiful sunrise over the outskirts of Johnstown, Carmarthen photographed by D.G Hales. http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/pictures/34338438 Ordos, Mongolia - The starry sky above Kubuqi desert http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/sep/22/photo-highlights-of-the-day

Georgia Mancio and Alan Broadbent with Oli Hayhurst and Dave Ohm in Nottingham Very nice 'mainstream' vocal concert without a standard in sight. Mainly Broadbent compositions with lyrics by Mancio with a few that were written the other way round. A short tour leading to a recording very soon.

You get some idea of the differences of outlook between Spedding and the jazz world of the early 70s on his website. The bit about the Nucleus composition '1916' made me smile. The different perspectives of Spedding and Carr are almost a mirror of the 'prog'/punk wars of 1976/7. http://www.chrisspedding.com/bio/bio3.htm